The current Secretary of Homeland Security is
Kirstjen Nielsen following the appointment of the then-incumbent secretary,
John F. Kelly, to the post of White House Chief of Staff by President
Donald Trump.[6] It was announced on October 12, 2017, that
Kirstjen Nielsen was nominated as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security by President
Donald Trump. She was confirmed by the Senate on December 5, 2017.[7]

On March 7, 2006, 43rd President
George W. Bush signed
H.R. 3199 as
Pub.L. 109–177, which renewed the still controversial
Patriot Act of 2001 and amended the
Presidential Succession Act of 1947 to include the newly created Presidential Cabinet position of Secretary of Homeland Security in the line of succession after the previously authorized
Secretary of Veterans Affairs (§ 503) (which are listed and designated in the order that their departments were created). In the
109th Congress, legislation was introduced to place the Secretary of Homeland Security into the line of succession after the Attorney General but that bill expired at the end of the 109th Congress and was not re-introduced.[citation needed]

List of Secretaries of Homeland Security

Prior to the establishment of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, there existed an Assistant to the President for the Office of Homeland Security, which was created following the
September 11 attacks in 2001.

Living former Secretaries of Homeland Security

As of November 2018, all five former Secretaries of Homeland Security are still living, as are all three former acting Secretaries of Homeland Security. The oldest being former acting Secretary
James Loy (born 1942).

During a July 16, 2013, interview, President Obama referred generally to the "bunch of strong candidates" for nomination to head the
Department of Homeland Security, but singled out Kelly as "one of the best there is" and "very well qualified for the job".[11]

Later in July 2013, the online internet news website/magazine Huffington Post detailed "a growing campaign to quash the potential nomination of New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly as the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security" amid claims of "divisive, harmful, and ineffective policing that promotes stereotypes and profiling".[12] Days after that article, Kelly penned a statistics-heavy Wall Street Journalopinion article defending the NYPD's programs, stating "the average number of stops we conduct is less than one per officer per week" and that this and other practices have led to "7,383 lives saved—and... they are largely the lives of young men of color."[13]

Kelly was also featured because of his NYPD retirement and unusually long tenure there in a long segment on the
CBS News program Sunday Morning in December 2013, especially raising the question of the controversial "stop and frisk" policy in
New York City and the long decline and drop of various types of crimes committed.